We had a garage sale a couple of weeks ago and I'd say it was a rather successful one. Another neighbor of ours joined us that Saturday so the massive sprawl was appealing to crowds. My friend had a ton of girls clothing and we had a ton of boys clothing, not to mention the combined mountain of toys.
I don't know about you but we, as in here in San Antonio, get those "shoppers" who are just going to turn around and sell whatever they get at a flea market. They are looking for BIG bargins.
Well, with MUCH regret, I share a story that ALL of us who participated in this garage sell REGRET TO THIS DAY... STILL. There was this older hispanic man picking about the toys. In spanish and broken english he tells me he's going to put a bunch of toys in a box and I give him a price.
He proceeds to put just about EVERY toy we had in the box (one of OUR tubs). He asks me, "How much for all these?" My gut tells me to say $20 but I say $15. There's a lot of toy in there. He tries to tell me that some of the toys don't have all the parts, which TWO of them didn't. I'm thinking, I really want to get rid of these toys, so I reply $10.
So he buys the toys for $10, A STEAL and he wants the tub at no extra cost. Ha ha ha uh NO. He loads up his toys then comes back... Now he's after the stuffed toys. There are some rather cute animals, BIG animals in the pile (and I do mean PILE). He asks us how much for all of them. Here we go again.
I think we started off with $10 and ended up settle for $6.00. I step away and my friend handles the transaction. She comes back with $5.55 cents. We are both disgusted with the money that we don't care how it's split up or IF it's spilt up between us.
He is the ONE customer that ruined our whole day... week. UGH! I will never do that again with another customer. If I think I'm asking for a fair price then I am going to stick with it. I will IN FACT go in the opposite direction if they try to talk me down. If I ask for $10 then it's $10. They say, $5 I'll say $15.
I would have rather been stuck with that pile of toys and give it away FREE or to Goodwill then sell it to that man if I had the chance to do it over.
There's no one else to blame but ourselves but we won't make that mistake again. At the end of the day it was profitable. We made almost $300. It paid for our Tivo (a refurb) Todd's been dying to get ever since we cut cable.
The Mother Land
- Garage Sales
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candesintx- November 17th, 2008
